The US justice department is preparing a report which concludes that the FBI
repeatedly broke the law by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist
to obtain more than 2,000 telephone call records over four years from 2002,
including those of journalists on US newspapers, according to emails obtained
by the Washington Post.

The bureau also issued authorisations for the seizure of records after the
fact, in order to justify unwarranted seizures.

The Washington Post said the emails show how counter-terrorism ­officials
inside FBI headquarters breached regulations designed to protect civil liberties.

The FBI's general counsel, Valerie Caproni, told the Washington Post that the
agency violated privacy laws by inventing non-existent terrorist threats to
justify collecting the phone records. "We should have stopped those requests
from being made that way," she said.

Caproni said that FBI's issuing of authorisations after the fact was a "good-hearted
but not well thought-out" move to give the phone companies legal cover
for handing over the records.

After the 9/11 attacks, the USA patriot act greatly expanded the government's
ability to monitor American citizens, including increased access to their phone
calls with the approval of lower-level officials than previously allowed. But
the authorisation had to be tied to an open terrorism investigation.

The Washington Post said two FBI officers had raised concerns. Special agent
Bassem Youssef observed that the necessary authorisations were not being sought
before phone records were seized and were sometimes only given later in response
to complaints from phone companies. Another official, Patrice Kopistansky of
the FBI's legal office, noticed a similar problem. She also raised concerns
when she was unable to get investigators to provide her with an open terrorism
case to justify issuing relevant authorisation.

The Washington Post reported that Kopistansky and Youssef discussed the worsening
"backlog" of cases without the necessary authorisations, or where
false claims were made about terrorism emergencies. "I also understand
some of these are being done as emergencies when they aren't necessarily emergencies,"
Kopistansky wrote to Youssef in April 2005.

The FBI subsequently issued a blanket authorisation covering all past searches,
although its legality was questioned.

The Washington Post said journalists on the newspaper and the New York Times
were among those whose phone records were illegally searched. The FBI later
apologised to editors of both papers.

By John Solomon and Carrie Johnson
Special to The Washington Post and Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 The Washington Post

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between
2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply
persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau
memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify
their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials
inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in
place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records
also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately
was not connected to imminent threats.

A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected
to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests,
bureau officials confirmed.

The records seen by The Post do not reveal the identities of the people whose
phone call records were gathered, but FBI officials said they thought that nearly
all of the requests involved terrorism investigations.

FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni said in an interview Monday that the FBI
technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked
nonexistent emergencies to collect records.

"We should have stopped those requests from being made that way,"
she said. The after-the-fact approvals were a "good-hearted but not well-thought-out"
solution to put phone carriers at ease, she said. In true emergencies, Caproni
said, agents always had the legal right to get phone records, and lawyers have
now concluded there was no need for the after-the-fact approval process. "What
this turned out to be was a self-inflicted wound," she said.

Disclaimer
The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author, who is solely responsible for its content,
and do not necessarily reflect those of 911Truth.org. 911Truth.org will
not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements
contained in this article.

Fair Use Notice
This page contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always
been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such
material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political
issues relating to alternative views of the 9/11 events, etc. We believe
this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided
for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes. For more information go
to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond
"fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.